


When the Fighting is Over

by Garonne



Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, M/M, Podfic Available, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23753143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: Ewen in France and Flanders, thinking about many things, but mostly about Keith
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	When the Fighting is Over

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Luzula for beta-reading, and in particular for lending me her immense historical knowledge of the details of the Rising. (Though I should say I changed quite a few things afterwards, so all remaining inaccuracies are my own!)

Eighteen long months passed without any news reaching Ewen of Major Keith Windham, be he dead or alive.

Lying in his narrow bed in the French King's court, or walking in the gardens at Versailles, Ewen often dwelt on that last meeting on the white sands of Morar.

"Go now," Keith had urged him, as Ewen crouched beside him on the beach. "My men will soon be upon us."

"I cannot leave you like this. Your wound-- Where are you hurt?" His hands were on Keith's body, seeking the reassurance that his eyes could not provide in the moonlight and shadows.

"It's not fatal. A mere scratch." It seemed incredible, far more than Ewen had dared hope for when he had seen that crumpled red-coated body lying at the foot of the slope, but indeed Keith's voice was strong and firm, and his breathing harsh but steady. "My men will take care of me. But wait--Ardroy-- " Fumbling at one hand with the other, Keith pulled off his signet ring. He placed it in Ewen's palm, and Ewen closed his fingers around it, scarcely knowing what he did.

"Windham..." Ewen began, speaking with difficulty around the tumult of emotions rising up within him. He could not leave now. Too much was left unsaid.

Keith's grip tightened around his. "I promise you, Ardroy, I am determined we shall meet again in this world." He pushed Ewen away. "Go, go. Your men are waiting."

His gillies were urging him to come away with them, and Ewen knew other lives than his were in danger if he lingered. As shots rang out further up the beach, he hurried his men down to the waiting boat.

As the boat carried him across the waves to the French privateer that stood offshore, he slid Keith's ring onto his finger, and vowed that someday he would return to these shores.

But that day seemed a remote, unlikely possibility. Ewen had scarcely been among the exiles at Versailles a week when it became clear to him that the Prince would never return to Scotland. The French army was busy in the Low Countries, and King Louis was more concerned about his rapidly emptying Treasury than about who sat on the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. 

In Versailles the days were long and wearisome, filled with intrigue and petty gossip that made Ewen's teeth ache. 

He composed long letters to Keith in his head, telling him all kinds of things he never could have shared with the Englishman in reality: the Prince's seemingly endless optimism and his wild plans to land in England; the constant bickering and jockeying for position among the exiles; Ewen's own sickening, steadily growing certainty that he would never see the Highlands again.

Other days, the things he imagined himself saying to Keith were much simpler, though no less heartfelt.

_Where are you now?_

_How are you?_

_I would give a great deal just to know you are well._

Weeks turned into months, and Ewen settled into an uneasy half-life in Versailles. He knew Alison was in France, but he did not see her. They had parted in Inverness, dissolving their engagement bond. A mutual acquaintance brought word that she was betrothed to a Frenchman. It stung a little, but Ewen could not help but wish her happy.

News of happenings in Britain came piecemeal to the exiles. Ewen learnt of the execution of Towneley, Balmerino and others he had known. The Prince spoke of landing in England, of secret supporters he was still in contact with, but Ewen had no part in those plans. He sided unquestioningly with Lochiel and the other chieftains, who were pushing for another French-supported landing in Scotland, though in truth Ewen did not hold out any hope for it.

"I am sick of politics," he confessed once to Archibald Cameron, who seemed always to be travelling, but who came to see Ewen every time he was in Versailles. "Tell me truly, do you think there is anything in this idea of another landing in the North?"

"The Prince has often listened to Lochiel in the past," Archie said gravely. "But I don't believe he will do so on this occasion." He smiled at Ewen's distraught face. "Your devotion to both men is touching, my young cousin, but greater forces than we can control are at work here." He had been sitting by Ewen to take a look at his leg, where the wound sustained on Culloden Moor had never fully healed, and now he rose to his feet. "I think you should leave Versailles, Eoghain. That is my opinion as a medical man. You will drown in politics here, or waste away to nothing."

All the exiles had been offered French military rank, even those too severely injured ever to use it, and these past few months Ewen had been severely tempted to accept.

He was no career soldier like Keith. He was a farmer, but he had no land here, and he rebelled at the thought of a miserable existence as the King's pensioner at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with the widows and orphans of the last rebellion in '19. On the other hand, he felt himself bound to the Prince, and to Versailles, by the remote possibility of Lochiel's raising another regiment to land in Scotland.

"Go," Archie said, sensing his reluctance. "I have not given up hope of another landing in our lifetime, never fear that -- but it won't be this year, at all events."

Lochiel said the same, when Ewen sought him out. He was in conference with Clanranald and Lord George Murray, but once those two gentlemen had left, he brought Ewen into his rooms, smiling at his young cousin.

"Archie has already spoken to me, and he is quite right to say it is pointless for you to linger here in Versailles at the moment."

"Do you really think so, Donald?" Ewen was torn between eagerness to be up and doing at last, and disappointment at the confirmation that there was no imminent hope of another landing.

"You must hold a commission in my own regiment, of course," Lochiel continued. "But I do not expect to see any action in the near future, and so I propose you should be attached to Drummond's men. I will speak to him myself."

Lord John Drummond was a career soldier with many years' service in the French army, a harsh, imperious man who had served on the Prince's staff during the Rising. Ewen had met him briefly at Falkirk and Culloden, and had admired his military acumen, even if he had disagreed with or even resented some of the decisions Drummond had made.

"You are taking the Royal Ecossais to Flanders, I know," he said, when Lochiel presented him to Drummond. "Let me serve with you." 

Drummond eyed him dubiously, his gaze lingering on Ewen's leg. "How many hours on horseback can you bear with that leg?"

"Enough," Ewen said fiercely.

In Flanders he was assigned to the victualling board and spent his days far behind the battle lines, organising and overseeing convoys of food for Saxe's army. It was laborious work, and it ground down his spirit. In the Prince's army he had been a warrior. He had led men into battle, and faced down his foe without fear. Now he spent his days counting water barrels and sacks of flour while other, uninjured men marched into battle. He persisted, nevertheless. He would take any opportunity to strike another blow at the Usurper who sat on King James' throne.

The days were hot and stuffy, mid-July sunshine beating down on fields destroyed by a decade of warfare, as the French soldiers under his command unloaded barrels of beef, flour and rum from the latest convoy. 

In the evenings he limped along the long rows of tents to his own abode. The sky above seemed endless to him, the land stretching out as far as the eye could see without so much as a hill to break up the monotonous flat landscape. It seemed to him as desolate as other people found the Highlands.

Was Keith likewise here in the Low Countries? Ewen knew Cumberland had been transferring troops here from the Highlands, now that the rebellion there was utterly crushed. Part of Keith's regiment was here, as Ewen knew from intelligence briefings. Was he on the front line when Saxe's army dealt Cumberland's forces a heavy defeat at Lauffeld?

In Versailles it had been easy to get hold of copies of the London Gazette, often no more than a few weeks old. Ewen had scanned each edition for news of a Major Keith Windham, whether he had been promoted, sold out, or been killed in action. But no man of that name had ever featured in the densely printed columns. 

Had Keith at least survived the night of their last meeting? Did he even now lie cold in the ground in the Highlands?

As news of the French victory at Lauffeld trickled back behind the lines, the officer in charge of victualling came to see Ewen in the tent that served as them as office.

"Cameron, we'll need to feed two thousand British prisoners this evening," he announced. He was a short, practical man with the thick accent of the Gascony region, habitually harassed-looking, as well he might be, given the difficulties of feeding even just the French soldiers billeted in their sector.

That evening, Ewen watched the streams of red-coated prisoners march past, their boots stirring up dust from the dry, hardpacked earth. Their officers were on foot, their horses forfeit. He looked for Keith in every face, though he knew how foolish that was.

That night he dreamt of Keith, so close but always just out of reach. When Ewen stretched out a hand to him, all he held was white sand, slipping through his fingers.

He woke and lay still in his camp bed, Keith's ring warm and hard under his fingers. The sounds of the camp at night intruded on his ears, the thud of marching feet and the wagons creaking past drowning out the cry of the plover, the crash of waves on the Morar shore, and his name on Keith's lips.

_Where are you, Keith Windham?_

_Do you know how often I think of you?_

_Would that I had kissed you while I could._

When the Act of Indemnity came in '47, Ewen was at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. He heard the news from a prisoner, one of the captured Hanoverian army officers he spoke to while organising victualling and billeting for their men.

"Were you not one of the Pretender's men?" The words had been spoken in Gaelic, and Ewen looked around, surprised.

The Hanoverian officer wore the kilt with his red coat, and Ewen realised he must be one of Loudoun's 64th Highlanders, whom Ewen had already faced in battle at Prestonpans. There were several of them among the prisoners.

In fact, hadn't this man been with Loudoun at Fort Augustus when Ewen was a prisoner there? Ewen thought he recognised him as a MacLeod of Dunvegan.

He stiffened, expecting some insult to the Prince. "That's right," he said coolly.

But the man only said mildly, "We are a long way from home. God grant we may return some day soon."

Ewen felt this was particularly tactless of him. "Sooner you than I, I fear," he said repressively.

The officer's eyes widened. "You mistake me, sir. Or rather, I think you cannot have heard the news. An amnesty has been declared for you Jacobite rebels. A few weeks ago, or so I have heard."

Ewen's heart began to beat faster. As he saw to the prisoners, he forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. He should not rejoice too soon. He knew that an Act of Indemnity would not apply to everyone, and there were some who would remain in exile until death.

And indeed, it was like to be Lochiel's case, Ewen thought with sorrow, as he sat by his kinsman's bed in the port of Bergues that autumn, knowing it would be their last meeting on this earth.

Drummond's French regiment had returned to Paris, which city the Prince was now under pressure to leave, unwelcome now that King Louis had made peace with the Usurper. Lochiel's regiment was to be absorbed into another, and Lochiel himself was laid low at last by the wounds from which he had never fully recovered.

"I shall not see Achnacarry again," he said, putting out a hand to steady Ewen, who had uttered an exclamation of protest through his tears. "But you, Eoghain mhóir, it gladdens me to think you will soon be there, and look on our native land in my stead."

Ewen turned to Archie, who stood by the window of his brother's sickroom, and who nodded now in answer to Ewen's unspoken question. "We have been assured you may return unmolested, if you should wish it."

Ewen was at Ardroy four months later, his heart still heavy with sorrow for the beloved cousin and chieftain he had left behind him, buried in the green fields of northern France.

He found his home in as good a shape as could be hoped. He stood by Loch na h-Iolaire, and the sheer joy of it brought tears to his eyes.

Today the waters were inky black under a cloudy sky. The heather covering the surrounding hillsides was beautiful to him in its winter brown. His ears filled with the gushing of a mountain torrent, snowmelt cascading down into the lake, and the scent of grass and heather was all around him in the cold sharp air. His heart lifted just to be here.

"You'll want to take a look at your books with me tonight," Aunt Marget said when he returned to the house. "I have not been able to buy anything in the way of cattle, but the harvest was good this year, and I do not despair."

Ewen plunged into the management of his estates, trying to take back some of the burden that Margaret Cameron had shouldered for so long. She had worked wonders, but there was work enough for more hands than they could call upon these days.

News from the rest of the world reached them via their neighbours and the tradesmen in Inverness. Britain and France had signed a treaty, and peace reigned on the Continent -- for the moment. Cumberland's troops were returning home. Was Keith in England now?

Every time one of Ewen's men returned from Inverness, he secretly and foolishly hoped a letter might have been left for him at the Post Office there, though he did not seriously expect it. Wherever Keith was, he could hardly enclose a message to a Jacobite rebel along with his military despatches.

In the winter following his return, Ewen had business in Edinburgh. As he dressed for the journey in breeches and stockings, his heart burned, the injustice of it sticking in his craw. In the past he had often put off his Highland dress for different reasons and thought nothing of it. Indeed, looking back, he did not think he had ever worn the philabeg in Edinburgh. But now that it was forbidden to him, it cut him to the quick to have to walk down the Canongate in anything else.

During his visit to the city, he sought out Alistair Ross of Dalwhinnie, a very distant cousin of his, and a prominent Edinburgh Whig who had vocally opposed the Rising.

Ross eyed his visitor warily as Ewen was shown into his drawing room.

"I am come to request a favour of you," Ewen announced. "I'm trying to find what has become of a Major Keith Windham. He was with the Royal Scots in '46, but I don't know what has become of him since. Can you make enquiries for me at the Castle garrison? "

Ross was taken aback. "May I ask why?"

"I must see him," Ewen said. "I... owe him a debt."

Ross agreed to do what he could, but nothing came of it, besides what Ewen already knew: that the main battalion of Keith's regiment had been redeployed to Flanders.

In his head Ewen had often tallied up their meetings: once at Ardroy, once in Edinburgh, once on Beinn Laoigh, then again in Fort Augustus -- he counted those two meetings as one -- and then finally on the shores of Morar, where Keith had been grievously wounded. Five meetings, the first and the last by water, as Angus had predicted, and that meant the threads of their story had come to an end, and they were destined never more to meet in this world. His heart turned cold every time he thought of it.

Spring came, and with it new life, the lambing, and plenty to do on the land. Ewen's cattle herd was a shadow of its former self, but he could count himself rich in sheep and lambs. He had seaweed brought up from the coast to spread on his rocky, steeply sloping fields, and sowed oats and barley.

He was kept busy over the next few months, spending the greater part of every day outdoors, as the daylight hours grew longer and the weather held fine. He was often on the road between Ardroy and Inverness, visiting his man of business there.

One evening in early August, four years after the Prince's landing, Ewen was walking back up to the house after a day spent surveying the state of the oats he hoped to reap in a month's time. The crop had begun to turn golden, and he was well pleased with its state. His men had gone on ahead, and he followed more slowly, planning in his head the other work he wanted to see done before this Sunday.

The sky was still light, with the long bright evenings of summer. He had just emerged from the birch and rowan trees that covered this part of his land when he heard the distant sound of horse's hooves.

He turned and saw a horseman much further down the hill, coming riding up the path from the Great Glen. Now the horse and its rider rounded a bend in the long winding path, and the trees hid him from Ewen's sight.

Ewen stopped to wait under the gnarled rowan tree at the crest of the hill, thinking he had recognised one of his nearest neighbours, who lived some fifteen miles away across the glen.

Then the horseman came into view, and Ewen's heart turned over in his chest. Keith was before him.

"Windham!" Ewen cried, amazed, hurrying forward.

Keith slid down from the saddle and came towards him, his hands out. "Ardroy!"

They clasped hands, and then Keith drew him into a tight embrace. When at last they broke apart, Ewen was almost dizzy with joy.

They were both laughing now. Keith's eyes were bright, and Ewen too had to blink fiercely for a moment.

"Ardroy," Keith said again. "You're here. You're truly here."

"Of course. Where else would I be?" Ewen hardly knew what he was saying. "God help me, but I can scarcely believe this is not a dream now, and I am truly awake."

Keith smiled that rueful smile of his. "My dreams of this moment never involved losing my way twice on my journey here, so I assure you, we must be wide awake."

"Come up to the house," Ewen said, recalled to himself and his sense of hospitality. "You must have been travelling for days."

"For months, in fact." At Ewen's surprised glance, he added, "I have been in Nova Scotia. I am but recently returned to Britain. I'm on furlough."

"In Nova Scotia! I thought-- But never mind that now. Come! You must be tired and hungry."

As they climbed the narrow track back up to the house, Keith's horse following, Ewen glanced sideways, as though to reassure himself that Keith was truly there. He found Keith was glancing at him. Their eyes met, and they both smiled.

The house came into view, and Keith stopped short. "It is just as it was."

Ewen remembered his own emotions on finding Ardroy intact. He wondered if Keith retained some sentimentality for the place they had first met.

"I had no idea what sort of welcome I might find here," Keith said. "I didn't know whether the house still stood, and if it did, whether you would be here, or whether your tenants would run me off. I have been imagining myself sleeping in the wet bracken and returning alone to England without having seen you."

He spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of emotion to his words. It brought forcibly home to Ewen that Keith, like himself, had spent the last two years knowing nothing of where the other was nor how he fared.

Ewen's heart gave a strange leap at the thought of Keith travelling all the way here without even knowing what he would find.

"Come into the house," he said, urging Keith forward, as he called for someone to see to Keith's horse.

In the hallway they met Aunt Marget, who had been out at the westernmost fields, overseeing preparations for the harvest. She stopped short at the sight of Keith, who had laid aside his heavy travelling cloak. Underneath that he was in uniform, even on furlough.

"But...'tis Major Windham!" she exclaimed, eying him doubtfully.

"The Major is my guest," Ewen said firmly. "Truly my guest, this time," he added with a grin.

Aunt Marget was wary at first, and understandably so. The last time she had seen a redcoat they had come to burn the house and lands. But she was soon won over by Keith's courtesy and Ewen's evident happiness, as they all sat down to dine together.

They talked while they ate, eager to learn the other's news, and to fill in the long and empty months of uncertainty that were now behind them.

"I was posted to the American colonies almost as soon as I had recovered from my wound," Keith explained. "I was in Halifax when I got news of the general amnesty for those who had taken part in the Rising. I wondered what you would do. Would you return? Were you even still alive?" He cast Ewen a rueful smile. "I hoped you had followed the Pretender's son to Rome and were safe there, but I thought it was more likely you were fighting for the French somewhere."

"Indeed, I was in Flanders with the Royal Ecossais. I often wondered whether you were there too." 

Keith shook his head. "I was far away. But I clung to the scraps of news we got of the fighting in the Low Countries, imagining you perhaps there."

They fell silent. The French might have been victorious while Ewen was in Flanders, winning back a series of towns taken by the British some years earlier, during Keith's own Flanders campaign. In the peace settlement, however, King Louis had abandoned all those hard-won lands, so that the battles might as well not have been fought.

Keith broke the silence. "I left word for you at the garrison in Edinburgh before I left. Did it ever reach you?"

"I enquired after you there, but they could tell me nothing."

Keith grimaced. "I feared as much." 

After they had eaten, Ewen led Keith to the same room he had occupied so many years ago, before the Rising, when the news of the Prince's landfall was spreading like wildfire across the glens, and everything seemed possible.

Keith crossed to the shelf and ran a finger along the spines of the books that stood there. "I remember looking at this collection of books, and wondering what sort of a man you must be."

The door was closed behind them, and they were finally alone. Ewen came closer, and covered Keith's hand as it lay on the shelf. Keith stilled for a moment. Then he turned his hand over, so that they were palm to palm. He brushed his fingers over the ring Ewen wore: the same ring Keith had given him, almost three years ago, on the shores of Morar. Ewen had seen Keith's gaze linger on it often over dinner.

"You wear it still," Keith said, almost wonderingly.

"Did you think I wouldn't?" Ewen said. Keith's skin was warm against his. "I have often wished I might have given you something of mine."

"I have wished that too," Keith said quietly. "On cold dark nights, thousands of miles away, when you and this place and all our meetings seemed to belong to another world."

They were standing very close, hands clasped and fingers entwined. Ewen looked up from their hands and into Keith's face, close enough to kiss.

"Ardroy -- " Keith began, and then his voice trailed away.

"Ewen."

Keith looked enquiringly at him.

"Under the circumstances, don't you think you might call me Ewen?"

Keith chuckled softly. "Under the circumstances, as you say, I think I might."

They stood, very still, in the middle of the room. The setting sun cast its last rays of light through the window, softening the edges of everything it touched. Ewen's chest was tight with the immense emotion surging up in him. He had been waiting so long for this and knew he would regret it forever if he held back now.

"I would have you, Keith Windham. Will you come to my bed?"

Keith smiled his wry smile, and pushed him back towards the bed, until they sprawled across it.

At first they only clung to each other, as though to reassure themselves that this was real, and no dream.

"God help me," Ewen whispered, "I thought never to see you again. And yet here you are in my arms."

Keith lay half-atop him, a warm solid weight. Ewen let his hands roam down Keith's arms, and up over the hard-packed muscle of his shoulders, and felt the stirrings of desire grow stronger inside him.

Keith's breath was harsh on his cheek. "Ardroy. Ewen. I have wanted you since first I laid eyes on you."

"Then you shall have me."

He pulled Keith closer to him and kissed his brow, his cheek, his lips. Keith's mouth was on his, his hands in Keith's short dark hair, and their hard open-mouthed kisses stoked the fire in his blood.

They scrambled to push off shoes and clothes, until they lay naked together in the bed. Ewen ran a hand down the soft skin of Keith's flank, relishing the hitch in Keith's breath, the wild beating of his heart echoing Ewen's own.

They had traversed a long and painful road to reach this place, in each other's arms, in this quiet attic room that was, for now, Ewen's entire world. The winter was past, the rains were over and gone. His heart hummed with joy, here with the one whom his soul loved.

"Ewen," Keith whispered, his voice a reverence and a plea, and they moved as one, driven by the desire, the overwhelming need, to satisfy the ache of many years.

Afterwards, they lay together in the bed, breathing quietly in the same space. Ewen ran a finger over Keith's bare shoulder, tracing out patterns.

"In Flanders I searched for you in the face of every redcoat that crossed my path. It seems stupid to say it... I knew it was stupid even at the time. But I couldn't help myself. Fate had brought us together so often and so unexpectedly in the past." He took a deep breath, remembering again the despair and loneliness of that time. "And yet Angus had spoken of five meetings only."

Keith raised his head to look down into Ewen's face. His expression was thoughtful. "I don't believe your soothsayer did say we should meet only five times. You told me rather that he had seen us meet five times. Seen five of our meetings, if you like. That doesn't mean we can't have many more."

"Perhaps," Ewen said, turning over the idea in his mind. 

Keith's mouth quirked suddenly into a smile. "I'm glad he saw nothing of _this_ meeting, I must say."

Ewen had to chuckle at that. "Very true." He moved closer in the bed to wrap his arm around Keith, kissing his brow. "Perhaps we may make our own destiny now."

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I have messed around with the dates to suit my own purposes, notably jumping from summer '47 to summer '48 as though there was nothing at all in between. Hopefully no one noticed or cared ;D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] When the Fighting is Over](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845773) by [Luzula (Luzula_podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula_podfic/pseuds/Luzula)




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